In central dictation systems it is often desired to provide a means of identifying which dictate station from a plurality of dictate stations has seized a particular recorder or to identify the dictator who has seized a recorder or recorded a particular segment of dictation.
It is also desirable in some situations to provide a station identifier which is selectively operable either to automatically identify the station when taken off-hook or to provide a sequence of identifier signals in response to a manual operation such as depressing a sequence of keys on a keyboard. For instance, in many office situations a dictate station will be located at a particular person's desk and it is normally desirable to have an identifier signal transmitted to the recorder or some other central memory device when the dictate station is taken off-hook. In this situation it is also desirable to have a means of manually generating an identifier signal in lieu of the automatic identification, such as when another dictator is using the office of the person identified by the automatic sequence.
In other office situations a particular central recorder will be connected to a plurality of dictate stations at various locations. Where such a recorder is dedicated to some kind of priority work, it is desirable to make the recorder responsive only if the dictation is preceded by an identifier signal indicating that an authorized person has seized the recorder. Such a situation might be where three dictate stations which are accessible to a large number of persons are linked to a particular priority recorder but it is desired to prevent unauthorized individuals from placing dictation on this recorder. In this instance, it is desirable to have a means for making a dictation recorder unresponsive to attempts to dictate thereon unless a particular manually entered identifier sequence precedes the dictation.
In a similar environment it may be desirable to automatically provide a sequence of identifier signals identifying the particular dictate station and to subsequently require manual provision of additional identifier signals identifying the dictator. In this and the other environments considered above, it is desirable from the standpoint of minimum expense that the same means be used at a dictate station to provide both identifier signals and control signals for controlling the recording functions of the recorders. In spite of the foregoing and other requirements for identifier signals in remote dictation systems, the prior art has simply provided apparatus to generate a series of electrical signals identifying a particular dictate station which are recorded in parallel with a segment of dictation at a recorder in the system or apparatus connected with a central switching system which is responsive to the state of multiple switches and can identify a state in which a particular dictate station has seized a particular recorder.
Thus, the prior art has not provided an identifying apparatus for use in a central dictation system which generates identifier signals at the dictate station, either manually or automatically, and transmits the signals to a recorder prior to the recorder being rendered responsive to control signals from the dictate station which are generated by the same means as the identifier signals. Furthermore the prior art has not provided an identification system which includes an automatic identifier at a location remote from the dictate station which may be selectively overriden by a manually operated identifier.